1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to the ability to store sporadically recurring performance metrics and other system events in a common store in a form that facilitates analysis with available software tooling without the necessity of database schema modifications.
2. Description of Related Art
An existing problem today is how to enable the ability to store sporadically recurring performance metrics and other system events in a common store in a form that facilitates analysis with available software tooling without the necessity of database schema modifications.
It is therefore important to apply prior art database structuring techniques from other fields to the specific needs of the aforementioned problem. The specific prior art employed includes a “star schema” relational database description frequently used in the construction of data warehouses. The specific star schema employed has been adapted to meet specific needs of the problem. This star schema is described in: “The Data Warehouse Toolkit” by Ralph Kimball, published by John Wiley & Sons Inc, c. 1996, Chapter 1, section titled “The Dimensional Model”. One related art method to which the method of the present invention generally relates is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,633,834, entitled “Baselining Of Data Collector Data”. This is a network management node which monitors network attributes of a network. The network management node is connected to network devices through the network and receives data values associated with measured network attributes from said network devices. The data values are stored in the network management node and a baseline value and rearm baseline value for a network attribute are calculated from a plurality of the received data values measured during a first period of time (e.g., a first time bucket). These data values are compared to the baseline value, and an alarm is generated in response to at least one of these data values exceeding the baseline value. The alarm is reset if at least one subsequently measured data value is below the rearm baseline value. The baseline value and rearm baseline value are recalculated from received data values measured during subsequent time buckets. Data values measured during the subsequent time buckets are compared to corresponding baseline and rearm baseline values.
The present invention differs from the above prior cited art in that the prior invention, focuses on a threshold-based alert mechanism which is not the focus of the present invention. The present invention can store performance metrics in a common store enabling analysis of the stored metrics but does not require baseline or rearm baseline values.
Another related art method to which the method of the present generally relates is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,633,883 entitled “Methods Of Organizing Data And Processing Queries In A Database System, And Database System And Software Product For Implementing Such Methods”. This prior related art method includes a reference table, which may not be stored, has columns associated with data attributes and rows containing related words assigned to those attributes in a collection of data. The stored data include at least one macroword thesaurus associated with an attribute and with a prefix length shorter than a word length of said attribute, and reference table row identifier lists respectively associated with thesaurus entries. Each macroword thesaurus associated with an attribute and with a prefix length has a respective entry for each prefix value having this prefix length and matching a corresponding prefix of at least one word assigned to this data attribute in the collection of data.
The present invention generally differs from the above prior cited art in that the prior invention, focuses on data collection but not with the Collection Manager facility of the present invention, which provides a framework and API permitting clients to define, initiate and manage the collection of selected types of performance data using a System Telemetry Warehouse API.